Pakistan tries to calm Cameron row (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Pakistan tries to calm Cameron row

2:51am Sunday 1st August 2010 in

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Pakistan's government has sought to calm the diplomatic spat over David Cameron's claim that elements in the country were "exporting terror", just days ahead of President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to the UK.

Mr Cameron's comment - made during last week's visit to regional rival India - has sparked fury in Pakistan. whose intelligence agency cancelled talks with British security officials in protest.

Opposition politicians in Pakistan have urged Mr Zardari to call off his trip, while demonstrators burnt an effigy of the Prime Minister on the streets of Karachi.

But Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira insisted that the visit would go ahead as planned and said that the row would not be allowed to undermine political relations or intelligence co-operation between the UK and Pakistan.

Describing Mr Cameron's statement as "a misperception", Mr Kaira said that Mr Zardari would use the opportunity to "explain the facts" to the PM during talks at Chequers on Friday.

"If the Prime Minister of the UK has said something that is contrary to the facts on the ground, it doesn't mean that we should boycott each other," said Mr Kaira at a press conference in London. "The President of Pakistan will explain and have a dialogue and good discussion and he will explain the facts to the new Government over here... We hope that the new management - the new leadership - over here, when they get the exact picture, will agree with us."

Pakistan was currently "the biggest victim of terror" and had lost 2,700 soldiers in military offensives against militants in the north-west frontier area bordering Afghanistan, he said.

He rejected suggestions that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was covertly backing the Taliban against the will of Mr Zardari's Government.

"The Pakistan intelligence agency is strictly following the policy of the Government of Pakistan and our policy is that we want a peaceful Afghanistan and we believe that without peace in Afghanistan there can't be peace in Pakistan," he said.

Security sources in Islamabad have been reported as confirming that ISI director general Lt Gen Ahmed Shujaa Pasha had called off a trip to London to discuss security co-operation with UK intelligence officials in protest. But Mr Kaira insisted that that the meeting was "operational", involving lower-ranking ISI agents, and had merely been postponed "because of their own commitments".